Trukhin Victor Pavlovich

Trukhin Victor Pavlovich

Biography

2023

Dismissal after corruption allegations

On September 7, 2023, it became known about the dismissal of the director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums and the enterprise for the production of bacterial drugs Viktor Trukhin. This was told in the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA) of Russia.

The Federal Medical and Biological Agency carried out a planned check in the field of combating corruption in the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums and the Enterprise for the Production of Bacterial Preparations" of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FSUE SPbNIIVES FMBA of Russia). During the audit, violations in the conduct of financial and economic activities were revealed. For the violations committed on September 4, 2023, the director of the FSUE SPbNIIVES FMBA of Russia Trukhin Viktor Pavlovich was dismissed by decision of the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (paragraph 2 of Article 278 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation), the FMBA Telegram channel says.

The agency added that the materials received were transferred for verification to law enforcement agencies for their legal assessment.

On September 7, 2023, RIA Novosti and Izvestia reported the disappearance of Viktor Trukhin. In particular, the news agency, citing law enforcement agencies, reported that the director of the vaccine institute in St. Petersburg had disappeared in Moscow. His daughter contacted the police and reported missing.

According to a Izvestia source, the daughter who filed a police report last saw her father on September 3, 2023, in the evening near the house where he lived.

After that, Trukhin stopped communicating. In messengers, he last appeared on September 5, 2023. The man did not answer calls, the subscriber is currently unavailable, the newspaper reports.^[1]

Arrest in embezzlement case

The Smolninsky District Court sent under arrest the former director of the Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums of the FMBA (SPbNIIVES) Viktor Trukhin. According to the press service of the courts of St. Petersburg on September 9, 2023, a criminal case was initiated against him under Part 4 of Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (misappropriation or embezzlement), committed on an especially large scale. He will remain in custody until November 7, 2023.

Trukhin asked for house arrest. The defense drew attention to the fact that Trukhin is actively cooperating with the investigation and is ready to help understand the qualifications of his acts, the message says.

Trukhin Victor

According to the investigation, the actions of the ex-head caused damage in the amount of 436.7 million rubles. Kommersant, citing materials from the investigation, writes that Trukhin transferred budget money in 2021 to the account of the St. Petersburg Institute of Biotechnology Mechnikov (Mechnikov Institute), a joint Russian-Nicaraguan vaccine production enterprise and the only one of its kind in this state, registered in Nicaragua. In the same year, Viktor Trukhin became honorary consul in St. Petersburg of this Central American republic.

The investigation, meanwhile, considers the actions of Mr. Trukhin to be an inappropriate and unauthorized financial injection. The write-off of funds from the NII account was discovered by the FMBA as a result of a planned anti-corruption audit of the institution, the federal agency said. At the same time, the department indicated that the responsibility for this lies with Viktor Trukhin.

Trukhin himself wrote a farewell letter addressed to his colleagues, in which he stressed that the decision to leave was not his. He listed the merits of the team, including the development of the Convasel vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus, and called this year "epoch-making in the history of our institutions."^[2]

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